If you’re like me, you might have a tendency to forget passwords. I always have good intentions on trying to keep workbooks secure and the formatting and data stable, and sometimes those efforts fall flat when I forget the password. Or you might have gotten the worksheets from someone else and they’re might have forgotten the passwords, just like I do. So if you need to unlock the password protection on a worksheet here’s some quick and easy instructions on using a macro to help you unprotect the sheet.

Please don’t use these steps for unlawful purposes. Also these steps will only work for password protected sheets, which are the ones you can’t edit but you can still see the data on them.

For advanced users you can skip straight to the code on step 3.

Step 1: Press ALT + F11 on your keyboard to open up the Visual Basic Editor

Step 2: Click on [Insert] then [Module]

Step 3: Copy & Paste this code into the module window that pops up:

Sub PasswordBreaker()
    'Breaks worksheet password protection.
    Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, k As Integer
    Dim l As Integer, m As Integer, n As Integer
    Dim i1 As Integer, i2 As Integer, i3 As Integer
    Dim i4 As Integer, i5 As Integer, i6 As Integer
    On Error Resume Next
    For i = 65 To 66: For j = 65 To 66: For k = 65 To 66
    For l = 65 To 66: For m = 65 To 66: For i1 = 65 To 66
    For i2 = 65 To 66: For i3 = 65 To 66: For i4 = 65 To 66
    For i5 = 65 To 66: For i6 = 65 To 66: For n = 32 To 126
    ActiveSheet.Unprotect Chr(i) & Chr(j) & Chr(k) & _
        Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & Chr(i3) & _
        Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)
    If ActiveSheet.ProtectContents = False Then
        MsgBox "One usable password is " & Chr(i) & Chr(j) & _
            Chr(k) & Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & _
            Chr(i3) & Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)
         Exit Sub
    End If
    Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
    Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
End Sub

Just like this:

Step 4: Go back to the password protected sheet and press ALT + F8

Step 5: Select the PasswordBreaker macro and click run.  It takes a little while to run, but it should do the trick!